Operations Coordinator

The COVID-19 vaccine programme or Cell is the emergency programme set up in response to the need to roll out the Government’s COVID-19 vaccine programme to the British population.

The Vaccine Cell runs on a matrix organisation structure split across numerous workstreams representing the professional areas (e.g., Operations Centre, Clinical, Finance, Commercial, Estates, Workforce etc). The Operations Centre is the core team responsible for managing the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine and is itself split into large-scale Vaccination Centres, Hospital Hubs, and Local Vaccination Services.

The Vaccine Cell is run by NHS England & NHS Improvement and the Department of Health and Social Care, with support from the MoD. It constitutes staff redeployed from all of those organisations, plus additional staff brought into the programme on fixed term contracts. Its physical base is Skipton House in London, although much of the support is currently provided by staff working remotely.

This role is in the “capacity” pillar of the COVID-19 vaccination programme, specifically the local vaccination services team. This team supports operational delivery of the COVID-19 vaccination programme by PCN and community pharmacy-led vaccination sites.

The COVID-19 vaccination programme is now transitioning into Phase 4, planning for future operational activity in line with JCVI recommendations for future vaccine roll out, whilst continuing to deliver new first and second COVID-19 vaccines to eligible patients as part of the “evergreen offer”.

The role will be responsible for supporting the operational management elements of the COVID-19 vaccination programme for Vaccination Centre and Community Pharmacy-led vaccination sites. The successful post holder will be required to work closely with the LVS team to ensure consistency of approach, and with colleagues across the wider COVID-19 vaccination and seasonal influenza programmes.

We are an integral part of the wider COVID-19 vaccination delivery model providing operational support both internally to colleagues in strategy, assurance and planning and externally to regional leads in NHS England and other broader groups. We work collaboratively with key stakeholders such as NHS Digital and other partners to deliver the COVID-19 vaccination programme.

The operations coordinator role is a dynamic role where the postholder must be flexible, adaptable, able to make good inter and extra team relationships such that to support the core team to remain up to date with all activities and communications relating to the programme.

The role requires good coordination, communication and administration skills, familiarity with project documentation, project lifecycles and a keen eye for detail. The post holder will need excellent relationship management skills as they will be building and maintaining relationships with immediate team members and key staff across the wider programme.

As the programme is data driven, attention to detail will be essential together with a good understanding of data information systems, information flows and an ability to support with the generation of data updates and reporting.

The post holder will be responsible for coordinating communication updates across the programme, keeping the core teams updated with and supporting the development of a variety of internal and external audience communications, project updates, data reports and maintaining filing systems.

The post holder will need to ensure they keep up to date with all the latest developments across the programme, support with information consolidation and cascades and support with briefing requests and updates on operational matters.

Please note that the reason for the fixed term role is short-term time limited project.

For further details / informal visits contact: Name: Laura Hobbs Job title: Head of Operations – COVID-19 Vaccinations (Community Pharmacy and Vaccination Centres) Email address: [email protected]